The Book "The Bedroom" - Mature Content

CHAPTER 6 – Brief Portion of Upcoming Book – MATURE CONTENT

The sudden, loud roar of his motorcycle down the driveway was a sound I knew in my bones. It was the sound of my peace shattering, the noise that instantly turned my insides into ice. He had been gone for several days with no communication. So, I literally had no idea what was coming my way.  My hands, still holding a drinking glass, began to shake uncontrollably. They weren’t just trembling; they were vibrating, a desperate tremor that coursed through my arms and into my chest. The glass slipped from my fingers.

It fell in what felt like slow motion, each millimeter of its descent an eternity. I watched it hit the sink and explode, a hundred tiny, jagged pieces spiraling apart. For a moment, it was as if I could see every single microcosm of glass splitting apart, just like my sense of security that I knew was seconds from spiraling apart just like the glass.

You see, there was never a positive outcome when he had been gone for days.  His return was always fueled with relentless chaos and anger.  I stood poised for the hell I was certain was coming.

The laundry door creaked open behind me. I didn't need to turn around to know he was there. I could feel the heavy, oppressive weight of his presence, the heat of his eyes boring into my back. All I wanted was for him to walk past me, to go into the bedroom and disappear. I kept my gaze fixed on the broken glass, praying he would.  I could feel my heart in my chest, my body ran cold, I was struggling to breathe.

My mind spinning, praying he would just not see me somehow, just go to the bedroom.  But he didn't. I felt the pressure of his gaze intensify until I had no choice but to slowly turn. My hands were still clutching parts of the broken glass. I looked down, a dull surprise hitting me as I saw the first tiny beads of blood welling up from my fingers.

"What are you doing!" he exclaimed, his voice sharp and full of rage. "We need to talk! Now!"

He stomped off, his footsteps loud and heavy in his riding boots. Each one was reminiscent of a pile driver on concrete; a physical manifestation of the violent anger I knew was coming. His steps echoed in my mind, a rhythmic, terrifying beat.

"GET IN HERE!" he screamed from the bedroom.

My hands felt numb as I set the broken glass down in the sink, my fingers sticky with blood. A tide of fear so thick it was paralyzing washed over me. I wanted to run. I wanted to disappear. But I couldn't. With a deep, shuddering breath, I reluctantly began the slow walk toward the bedroom.  All I could think about was my kids, my kids, not me them and all they had already been through.  With my mind continuing to spin I knew what was waiting for me.

As I reached the door, he was standing just inside. He didn't have to say a word. He just made a sharp, aggressive motion with his hand—a clear command—for me to close the door.

The air in the room was thick with his rage. He began, his voice a low, furious rumble, to lay out the story of my supposed infidelity. It was a masterpiece of fiction, full of made-up details, witnesses that didn't exist, and timestamps from places I had never been except for work.

He told a tale of how I was to blame for the fact that he had not been home in days because a couple had come up to him randomly in the Fred Meyer parking lot when he went to get a few items for dinner.  This couple provided him with information that they felt he needed to know regarding my purported infidelity.  I asked him who, “who was it that told you this?”  “I know I have seen them,” he said but I don’t remember their names.  What does it matter?  They wanted me to know to protect me.”  I knew something was off as he never forgets anyone’s name, ever or a face.

The absurdity of it all should have made me laugh, should have made me angry. But it didn't. I just stood there, the words leaving my mouth like a broken record. "I'm so sorry." "I'm sorry for whatever I did." "I know I messed up." Each apology was less a confession and more a reflex, a desperate attempt to throw water on a fire that had no fuel.  I couldn’t even hear my own voice.  I was apologizing not for something I did, but for the storm he was creating

The air in the room getting heavier with each word, like a blanket I couldn’t push off. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took off his riding boots and vest, then placed his bike key  in the inside pocket of his vest and threw it on the floor.  He said, “give me your phone”.  I was clutching it not even realizing I had picked it up off the counter on the way into the bedroom.  As he sat and I stood across from him a faint smile appeared on his lips that didn't reach his eyes. "You know you're the only one who understands me," he said, and the words, so familiar, felt less like a compliment and more like a chain. My hands were wrapped around my phone in one hand and the other balled into a fist, nails digging into my palm, a desperate anchor.

He screamed “Give me your fucking phone!”

I instinctively shrank back, a tremor running through me that I hoped he couldn’t see. "You're so sensitive," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“Give me your fucking, phone! Let’s see how many other people you are fucking!”  My phone was used for work I was terrified, any male that was in my phone was a target for his false accusations of infidelity.  He yelled at me again. 

My chest felt tight, the words I wanted to say—the words that screamed for me to run—trapped behind my teeth. My silence, I knew, was what he wanted. It was his proof that he was fully in control, and I was exactly what he needed me to be.

I was mentally clipping out, no longer fully present, my mind disconnecting from the emotional trauma.

The words he was saying didn't belong to my life. "The Fred Meyer parking lot," "my ex-husband," "Idaho." They were details from a story I wasn't in. I could hear his voice, a high-pitched scream, but the words themselves were just noise. It was as if I was watching a movie with the volume too high. My own voice, when it came, felt small and far away. "I'm so sorry." The apology wasn't for him. It was a plea, a silent message to my own panicked mind to just shut down. My body felt hot, my ears rang, and a wave of nausea washed over me. I wasn't just detached from his lies; I was detached from my own physical self, a ghost in my own body, watching myself apologize for a life that wasn't mine.

He didn't just accuse me. He used my real life as a weapon against me. He threatened to tell my children. He threatened to ruin my job. The lies he was screaming didn't matter. What mattered were the consequences he was attaching to them. This was no longer an argument; it was a negotiation with a terrorist. My apologies were ransom. "I'm so sorry I upset you." "I'm so sorry for what this is doing to you." I would have apologized for the sunrise if it meant he would stop. I was a puppet, and my strings were my fear. My life, my children, my career—all of it was being held hostage by his fiction, and the only key I had was my own self-denigration.

I was at the point of begging him to not include anyone in this situation and begged,  “what can I do please don’t call people or tell the kids, please.” 

With an insanely eerie smile he said “take your clothes off” my heart sank I had no idea what was coming I just knew that if it didn’t that I was doomed to his spreading lies that I would have to defend within my existence and potentially lose my job I felt I had no options.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with fear, as I slowly started to take my clothes off without loosing eye contact with him.  “Hurry up, fuck hurry up!” He screamed.  He then took his pants off. 

“Get over here”.  He was laying on the bed and he ordered me to straddle the bed post.  The room began to swim, and the edges of my vision went gray as a wave of nausea washed over me.  He ordered me to begin to rub myself on the bed post.   I was ready to pass out but he just kept screaming at me “fuck it, fuck it , like you did Dean in Idaho!”  Tears were rolling down my face as he grabbed my shoulder and pushed me down harder on the bed post, still clutching his penis in his other hand. My mind raced through all the possibilities, each one more terrifying than the last I knew that one wrong word, one wrong look, and this horrifying situation would only get worse.  “Fuck it or I am calling everyone, and I am telling the kids what you did!”  I did as he said, faking every movement just to get him to climax so that I could disappear.  It seemed like forever, the yelling and the attempts to force the bedpost literally inside of my body. 

Silence, it was finally over. He loomed over me, a storm cloud blotting out the sun, equivalent to stealing the air from my lungs.

Look at you,' he said, a smile playing on his lips. 'You're finally getting it.' "He got up got dressed and walked out of the room.  The tension didn't leave when he did. It lingered in the air, a phantom that made me jump at every sound.

"It was in that moment, as I stood there in the aftermath having apologized and been punished for a crime I hadn't committed, that I finally saw it. He wasn't just mad. He wasn't out of control. This was what he wanted. He fed on my fear. My panic was his victory, and my apologies were his proof that he had won.

His words, the ones that accused me of infidelity, clung to me like a scent, even after he was out of the room I had guilt not  for what I did, but for what he convinced me I had become.

I pulled myself together knowing that I had to go get my daughter from school and that the boys would be home soon.   I went into the kitchen and as I looked at my reflection in the shattered glass of the sink all I saw was a stranger, a coward who had apologized for her own existence.

I left to pick up my daughter.  She got in the car and asked if I was okay, I responded with “yes of course”.  “Is he home?”  “Yea”.  “Where was he?”  “Some work thing.”  I frantically changed subject and hid my hand with cuts form the glass.  We chatted on the way home about nothing really. 

As we came in the kitchen he was sitting on the couch, he looked up and smiled at my daughter, his rage had vanished replaced by a chilling normalcy.   He just sat there on the couch as if an hour prior he had just asked me to pass the salt. The screaming, the threats, the torrent of lies—it was as if it had never happened. This sudden return to calm was my life.   I had lost myself in every second of my life.  The gaslighting had burned the skin off my bones leaving a walking shell of a human being.